Incredible Discoveries of Amazing Species of Animal…

So big this world is, bigger is the category of animals. One life is not enough to know everything about them. Every year lots of new discoveries are done in this field. These species vary only on the basis of their internal and external attributes. Most common reason for the change in the breed of species is atmospheric changes. This type of change occurs mainly because of survival point of view. The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University published list of important and new findings that they uncovered during the previous year. Here we have complied all the discoveries done till now. Just scroll down to have a look…

Walter’s Duiker

Walter’s Duiker

Walter’s duiker is a species of duiker found in Togo, Benin and Nigeria. It measures under 40 centimeters (16 in) tall at the shoulder, and weighs between 4 and 6 kilograms. It was described in 2010 following comparison of specimens in museum collections with those from bushmeat markets. Its name commemorates Professor Walter Verheyen, who was the first to obtain a specimen of this species of duiker from Togo in 1968.

Raspy Cricket

Raspy Cricket

Gryllacrididae are a family of non-jumping insects in suborder Ensifera occurring worldwide, known commonly as “leaf-rolling crickets” or “raspy crickets”. The family historically has been broadly defined to include what are presently several other families, such as Stenopelmatidae (“Jerusalem crickets”) and Rhaphidophoridae (“camel crickets”), now considered separate.

As presently defined, the family contains two subfamilies, with the vast majority (over 90 genera containing over 600 species) in the subfamily Gryllacridinae.

The remaining subfamily, Lezininae, contains only a single genus with 12 described species. They are commonly wingless and nocturnal. In the daytime, most species rest in shelters made from folded leaves sewed up with silk.

Some species use silk to burrow in sand, earth or wood. Raspy crickets evolved the ability to produce silk independently from other insects, but their silk has many convergent features to silkworm silk, being made of long, repetitive proteins with an extended beta-sheet structure.

Darwin’s Dark Spider

Darwin’s Dark Spider

Darwin’s bark spider is an orb-weaver spider that produces one of the largest known orb webs, web size ranged from 900–28,000 cm2 , with anchor lines spanning up to 25 metres (82 ft). The spider was discovered in Madagascar in the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in 2009.

The species was named in honor of the naturalist Charles Darwin, with the description being prepared precisely 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, on 24 November 2009.

Its silk is the toughest biological material ever studied, over ten times tougher than a similarly-sized piece of Kevlar. The average toughness of the fibers is 350 MJ/m3, and some are up to 520 MJ/m3, making the silk twice as tough as any other spider silk known.

The web of Darwin’s bark spider is remarkable in that it is not only the longest spanning web ever observed, but is among the largest orb webs ever seen, at an area of up to 2.8 square meters (30 sq ft). Nephila komaci, discovered in 2009, and some other Nephila species also make webs that can exceed 1 m (3 ft 3 in) across.

According to professor Ingi Agnarsson, director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Puerto Rico, the spider’s web occupies a unique biological niche: “They build their web with the orb suspended directly above a river or the water body of a lake, a habitat that no other spider can use”.This position allows the spiders to catch prey flying over the water, with webs observed containing up to 32 mayflies at a time.

The strong silk and large web are thought to have co-evolved at the same time, as the spider adapted to the habitat. Scientists are currently researching how the spider is able to weave such a large web over water along with being able to anchor drag lines on either side of a river.

Like other spiders of the genus, Darwin’s bark spider displays extreme sexual dimorphism, with large females and small males, although neither have been measured larger than 2 cm.

The spider was described along with a previously undescribed species of fly, which appeared to have a kleptoparasitic relationship with it. The flies often feed on the spider’s catches before the spider wraps them. Occasionally, spiders have been observed to chase away the flies when they land on something that the spider is eating.

Louisiana Pancake Batfish

Louisiana Pancake Batfish

Louisiana pancake batfish, Halieutichthys intermedius, belongs to the Ogcocephalidae family of batfish. It is native to the Gulf of Mexico, and was discovered in 2010. Its entire range is covered by the effects of the Deep water Horizon oil spill.

Hsuan-Ching Ho, of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, discovered the Louisiana pancake batfish when he was visiting his colleague Prosanta Chakrabarty at the Louisiana State University. They noted that the specimens of the pancake batfish in the collection of the Baton Rouge Museum of Natural Sciences were actually three species, not a single one as previously thought.

Trawling expeditions were conducted and consistent differences were identified in those found. They joined with John Sparks, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York to write the description that appeared in Journal of Fish Biology.

Pancake batfish are so named from the flat shape of their bodies and from their motion on the sea bed, described as similar to a bat crawling.They have pelvic fins which act like feet, complete with elbows to hop along the sea floor.They feed on invertebrates, and uses chemical lures to catch prey.They are small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand and described as being as thick as a “fluffy pancake”.

The Louisiana pancake batfish was named as one of the top ten new species of 2010 by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. John Sparks, credited as one of the discoverers of the species, said “If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity, especially micro diversity, is out there that we do not know about”.

Originally thought to be a single species, these fish were determined in 2010 to be divided into three distinct species, the others being Halieutichthys aculeatus and Halieutichthys bispinosus. While the other batfish are found along the Atlantic coast from Louisiana to North Carolina, the Louisiana pancake batfish is only found in the Gulf of Mexico in a range entirely covered by the effects of the Deep water Horizon oil spill.

They live at depths of up to 400 meters (1,300 ft). Although numbers are not precisely known, in the initial trawl which led to their discovery around 100,000 fish were caught; only three were pancake batfish.

Pinocchio frog

Pinocchio frog

The new discovered frog is also the smallest wallaby in the world and has Pinocchio like nose which is discovered in a remote mountain “lost world”. This Pinocchio frog is amongst an array of multiple species that are found in the “lost world” and many of them are like cartoon fantasy characters just like this wallaby frog. The males of this genus have a knob on the nose which points upward during vigorous calls and goes back to its normal position when they get calm down.

Purple Octopus

The native of the coast of Newfoundland Canada is a purple octopus which is identified during expedition off the coast in which 11 new species of sea were found. The team included Canadian and Spanish scientists which used remote operated vehicle in the voyage of sea far down to 3000 meters deep.

According to the researchers this 20 day project was aimed to find out relations between cold water coral and other bottom residence creatures in an alien atmosphere however they found 11 new species in this successful trip.

Chromodoris Fentoni

Chromodoris Fentoni

Chromodoris is a genus of very colorful sea slugs or dorid nudibranchs, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Chromodorididae. The specie also discovered at the Gulf of Mexico is a shell less snail Chromodoris Fentoni and also known as nudibranch.

The specimen was first identified in 2009 by a fisherman who donated it to the commission and wildlife research institute in St. Petersburg which later on verified by the Polytechnic University of California state that the specie has never been documented.

However it is featured in the 2011 volume of “American Malacological Bulletin”. This shell less snail has external gills and vibrant colors on skin.